FERTILITY ▶▶▶ An extra benefit will also be identifying


cows that are repeating their heat, which will help to establish which cows or bulls are having fertility issues, explains John Larkin, Moocall’s head of technology and marketing. He says the collars track three types of data


from the bull – the proximity and frequency of proximity to the nearest cow, the bull’s activity during that proximity and whether mounting behaviour has taken place. Pulling all that data together and running it


through their software means it should strip out any incidental contact the bull has with the herd, such as when they are lying down near one another. Alerts can be sent via an app or by text message, meaning a smartphone is not required for the system, explains Mr Larkin, and they are transmitted over any mobile network, which increases the chance it will work in a poor signal area. If data is gathered while there is no signal,


The Moocall Heat promises to help identify cows not cycling or bull lameness much earlier


Bull collar set to reduce the cost of poor fertility


BY ANDREW MEREDITH P


utting a high-tech collar around the neck of the farm’s bull could be a new way for beef and dairy farmers to pick up any cattle fertility issues earlier,


thereby improving herd performance. Poor fertility is very costly, as it increases the


interval between calvings, meaning fewer calves a year. Ultimately, it leads to animals being culled. Irish company Moocall has invented the


gadget, and promises its “Heat” collar will assist in earlier identification of problems such as not cycling or a bull becoming lame. The idea behind the invention, set to be launched early next year, is to use an electronic collar on the bull to interact with special tags worn by the cows to spot when the two animals are in regular proximity. This can then be identified as a bulling


event, and an alert is sent to a mobile phone, which (if the bull is vasectomised) can assist with artificial insemination timing, or to


generate calving dates for beef farmers. The start-up cost is US$1,456 for one bull


collar and 50 radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, which are unique to Moocall, with subsequent boxes of 25 tags costing about $93. After the first 12 months of use, there will also be an annual subscription charge of $352 to cover the data used by the collar and additional software upgrades.


the information will be stored until there is a network, and then transmitted in a burst, so providing there is some signal in each field, it can be effective. The collar has on average an eight-week


battery life, although if it is constantly searching for a network, it will be somewhat less than that, Mr Larkin says. However, a mere five hours of charging will give another month’s service. This means a bull is likely to only need handling once in the duration of a tight breeding season to keep the collar powered, and the tags in the females are passive, so require no battery power at all.


Which type of system is Moocall Heat most suitable for?


With dairy systems chiefly operating via artificial insemination first and then using a bull to mop up the stragglers, the system can be used to identify cows that have not held to first service. In a dairy system, a vasectomised bull


could be used to identify cows that are undergoing a “silent” heat, which means some other methods of heat detection


would not pick them up. In a spring-calving beef system using a


bull, cows are served outdoors and only checked once or twice a day, meaning fertility problems are generally only picked up months later at scanning. The worst-case scenario is the bull becoming sterile or sub- fertile. A high number of repeat heats would flag this issue up much sooner.


▶ FUTURE FARMING | 9 November 2017 45


WAYNE HUTCHINSON/FLPA/IMAGEBROKER/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK


MOOCALL


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